Call of the Earth
by GreenyLove
Summary: In the dark of the night, young Anders, Jowan, and a certain Amell execute a daring escape. Prequel. [FemAmell]


Hello, all. Greeny here.

For those waiting for my Zelda story, _Sheikah Smiled_, to update, I apologize and promise I will update as soon as Dragon Age stops dominating my soul. Again.

This is one of two prequels to my largest Dragon Age fics. It introduces the lady Amell.

Read it.

*flops*

* * *

"Ouch!"

"Watch it, Jowan," growled the surly blonde boy.

"Sorry," squeaked nervous Jowan.

"Quiet," hissed the girl, signaling her companions to silence.

Raw moonlight glazed the waters of Lake Calenhad. They rowed their small tugboat in the long shadow of the tower, coasting as best they could through the rolling waters. The wind was less still that they would have preferred on the night of their grand escape, creating a chop that was difficult to fight through for the unexperienced sailors. Anders and Jowan rowed in tandem as best they could, and their teamwork surprised and pleased Ila.

She did not row for two reasons. The first was that someone must keep lookout, and it should be, she argued, the one with the sharpest eyesight, which was obviously her. The second was that she was the only one with some minor mastery over the water. In their lessons on freezing they first learned to create and distill ripples, in a mere effort to manipulate the water. With this Ila could still the smaller waves, stroking them out like wrinkles in a great deep blue fabric. The use of her lessons as part of this escape did not make her grin as it did Anders, who saw it as a direct slap in the face of the "old fart bags" who governed their lives. Ila enjoyed magic for magic's sake, and like using it where it was best needed. In this case, it pleased her to be of use.

"We're almost there," she said after a long moment where the only sound was the slip and slap of the oars against the water. Sure enough, the shore stood dark and close.

"What happens once we're there?" Jowan asked.

In the dark she saw Anders roll his eyes. "We run, stupid, and we don't stop running until we hit the Imperial Highway. Then we follow it west, into the Frostbacks, then north, until we're out of Ferelden."

"And then?"

Anders shrugged and rowed. "I'm thinking Antiva. I hear there are women with skin like gold."

Jowan flushed. "Can I come? I don't want to be by myself."

"You won't be," Ila whispered, shooting each boy a glance to remind them of their pact. Before leaving, each had pricked their palm with the tip of a knife, innocently, shaking hands and promising just as innocently to be friends forever, and stick together no matter what happened. It had been Jowan's idea. He had the knife. It was the only way he could be convinced to come along, and according to Anders, they had needed him. Ila was a slight girl, not strong enough to row the boat or lift it out of its hiding place in the boathouse. Jowan on the other hand was older, bulkier, and according to Anders, infatuated with her and would likely do whatever she said.

Sure enough, it had be easy to convince Jowan to join their escape plan. The boy was nervous around magic, and when he heard that in the outside world he didn't have to have any more lessons, he agreed quite readily. Truthfully Ila guessed it was the promise of eternal friendship that drew him, rather than the promise of freedom from lessons. Lessons weren't so bad, after all. Ila found them fun.

The escape had been Anders plan. He was the middle of the three in age, having been at the Circle for less than a year after being dragged in, surly and muddy, at the age of twelve. No less than four months later had he approached Ila after their evening mass, in the crowded high-ceilinged halls outside the chapel, and grabbed her elbow gently through her long tunic sleeves.

"Do you want to be my friend?" he asked, as casual as that.

Perhaps he had noticed how Ila largely kept to herself, and to her studies, sitting on the basement stairs with her candle and her books, reading late into the night until the light of morning fell through the high slitted windows.

Perhaps he had noticed her constantly pestering the quartermaster Tranquil for more blank vellum with which to write letters home. It was fairly common knowledge among the young apprentices that Ila had a rich family off in the Free Marches, and was in fact the daughter of some lord's cousin, destined for a life of ease until her aptitude for magic was discovered. Now she receives a few missives every few months from her mother and someone she called "Aunt Leandra", and constantly writes back. Irving allows it, the gossip says, because she is young.

Perhaps Anders knew that like many young apprentice mages all she really wanted was to go home.

In the hallway that night she stared at him and blinked with her large leaf-green eyes, regarding him like one might regard a particularly complicated text written with dragon spit. "Can you help me translate the Scroll of Remedies before class tomorrow?"

It seemed a fair trade.

He laughed. "Sure."

And he did, faithfully stayed up with her on the stairs that night with his own candle and an endless amount of humor and patience until the scroll was neatly worked out. He was much smarter that she first gave him credit for, thinking him a bit too roguish to be smart, or perhaps he simply had a knack for the healing arts.

They had been "friends" - Anders had a strange way of showing his friendship: they could not eat together or walk in the halls together and they could only study together at night - for three weeks when he first asked her what she knew of life outside the tower.

"Very little," she admitted. They were on the basement stairs, in their usual meeting place where their flickering candlelight would not garner the attention of the ever-present templars. "I was only five when I came here. I'm eleven now."

"I'm only twelve," he said, a bit proudly. "And I remember what it's like. I know it's better than this stupid place."

"Do you miss your family?" she asked softly.

His face grew hard, then hurt, then unreadable.

"No. I just _know_ there is a better life out there, though. What they do to us here, treating us like we're bombs about to explode with demonic evil - it isn't fair. We don't need locked up. I don't need locked up."

She was uneasy. "What are you going to do?"

"Leave," he whispered instantly. His eyes were fierce in the orangey darkness. "Come with me."

She hardly thought. "Okay."

As casual as that.

Anders had a plan, one that needed three people. That's where Jowan came in. He was a fast friend of Ila's, but not a friend at all of Anders, who found him kind of meek and annoying. When Ila suggested him, Anders face grew sour and he stuck out his tongue, but reluctantly agreed that Jowan was a good enough fit. The three began to meet, always at night, every few weeks, never too often lest the templars get suspicious, and plan.

And their planning had led to this.

Sneaking out the kitchen door was easy, with Jowan, who was pretty good at simple charms, gently stunning the old cook into a peaceful sleep. The boat they stole from the boathouse, a small tugger hidden under a dusty tarp, surely not one that would be missed. Gathering supplies had been Ila's job, and she did it well enough, taking this and that at intervals from the stock room under the excuse of her studies, which were well known to the Tranquil.

Now, the small boat glided through the magically calmed waters, sliding onto the gravely shore with a soft crunch. Anders hoped out, motioning Jowan to follow. The hems of their pants grew wet as they tugged the boat farther onto shore, into the shadows of a flowering shrub. Ila climbed out, lifting out their single pack of supplies, which Jowan immediately offered to carry.

"Which way?" he asked Anders, who was their unofficial leader even though Jowan was the oldest at fourteen.

Anders looked up and down the strand, first south to where the lights of the inn glimmered distantly, then to the north, where there was only darkness. "West," he said at last, pulling his cloak tight around his shoulders. His cloak was a thick, furred affair, traditional of the Anderfells, where he came from and which gave him his name. Ila's cloak was the thinner finer velveteen of the Free Marches, the one and only gift from her mother she was allowed to retain. Jowan didn't have a cloak, but didn't mind the chill bite of the Ferelden wind, being native to this muddy country.

They set off westward, through the tree covered hills bordered the broad lake, each wrapped in their thoughts and worries. Anders considered his mental map, wondering how far it was to the road and once there, should they take it or keep to the bushes? Gherlen's Pass was southwest, by his approximation, and perhaps a day and a half's walk, if they went vigorously.

Jowan pictured a variety of nasty night monsters pouncing out of the dark between the trees and eating them, thoroughly and with much abandon. He had read too many folktales of pookas and hellhounds.

Ila was the only one to glance back at the Kinloch Hold's noble silhouette and wonder, forlornly, if she would ever find so nice of a library again.

The trees and shrubs were thick and the ground damp and squishy from the spring rains. Moonlight filtered through the branches, dappling the forest floor. Anders found a deer trail, leading westward, and they followed it through the wet dark.

This darkness was different than the darkness in the basement of the tower. This forest-darkness was loud with life and sounds, with the scutter of night critters, the soft pad of wolf paws, the chirp of crickets. There were no words, at least no words she could understand. It did not speak to her like the darkness of the Tower basement. Perhaps if she wasn't so focused on her footing, on keeping up with the boys, she might be able to hear the call again. The call that had always been there, since her earliest memories lying in her soft bed in Kirkwall, listening to that distant humming.

When she was a child she used to think there were bees in her room. It scared her, being uncomfortable around insects, and it began to scare her mother Revka when her only child began to ask about the dark. That was how they new something was wrong, and when they asked Ila what the darkness said, she said, "I'll show you," and presently made the candleflame dance. Less than a fortnight later she was sent off to Ferelden, and poor Revka cried, and the Amell family fell further in disgrace.

Ila knew and cared very little about that, though.

Now she only cared about not falling down, as the twigs caught at her cloak and the very air seemed to press muggy against her pale skin. Her blood rushed, making her light-headed with the fever of escaping. All three felt it, the electric excitement, the glee of running free through the woods. In those first few hours they felt the whole world expand out before them, and they thought of the places they could go.

After a few hours, though, they began to slow down. The trees thinned and through them Ila could make out a moonlit road. Not a paved section of the Imperial Highway, which ran east to west across the heart of Ferelden, but a well-beaten cart track running north-south around the shores of Calenhad.

"We follow that," said young Anders, speaking for the first time since leaving the boat. "And we'll hit Gherlen's Pass. We can get into the mountains from there."

"Can they follow us?" Jowan asked. "They" were the templars.

Anders shrugged. "This time of year the snowmelt makes the lower roads muddy. It's terrible for horses and miserable for armor. We'll be faster than they will. Plus they might figure we'll head straight to Redcliffe or something. They might waste time checking there."

"Greagoir doesn't waste time," Ila said, and the boys exchanged glances.

Anders scoffed and said mockingly, "Oh, Greagoir, how I shall miss his face-!"

"His sunny disposition," Jowan chimed in.

" - And his heartfelt devotion to our safety. I can just picture him pulling in hair out, half in tears with _worry._"

Ila flushed and mumbled, "I'm only saying."

Anders half-grinned. "Come on, now. Let's focus on the positives."

"Can we make camp?" Jowan asked, as though "making camp" was the next grand phase of their adventure. Or perhaps he wanted to sit down. In truth, so did Ila. They seldom did this much walking inside the tower.

They both looked to Anders, their nominated leader, who considered. "No. We have to keep moving."

Jowan grumbled and Ila only sighed. Anders glared at them both and walked towards the edge of the trees. He paused before the forest's end, glancing up and down the long road. Seeing nothing in sight, he stepped into the bare yellow moonlight, motioning his friends to follow. They turned south, sticking to the shade on the edge of the road, and walked on.

It was well past midnight when Anders finally declared it time to rest. "Until dawn," he said, spreading his cloak out across the ground. Ila did the same, and poor Jowan pulled a ragged blanket out of the pack for his own use. The ground was hard beneath the damp grass, and cold. Instantly Ila thought of the children's dormitory, where the beds were bunked and there was warmth, and the shift of sleeping bodies, and constant candlelight to keep away the dark. If she closed her eyes she could see herself there, on her bed in the corner, waiting for the templar in the hallway to go off and play dice before slipped away, down to her step on her stairs…

"…And then we'll buy some real bedrolls," she heard Anders assure Jowan. "Once we reach the north. I hear they treat mages like kings in the Imperium, with slaves and everything."

"That might be nice," Jowan said, uncertain of his stance on slavery.

"Or we can head to Orlais. I bet there's an underground…mages' collective or something. We can be renegades in the name of freedom! Or maybe…"

Anders whispered on, painting a grand picture of how life would be, now that they were free from the shackles of oppression. It all sounded nice to Ila, but she imagined she would just go home to Kirkwall. She had brought her bundle of letters. Surely, if she told her parents that she no longer wanted to be a mage, if she lied about the humming, maybe they would take her back. Or maybe, she thought to herself, she could just go back to the Circle. Surely there was one in Kirkwall, and she could be near her mother…

As Anders and Jowan nodded off and the night became quiet and Ila drifted on the edges of sleep, she swore she heard something, far beneath her in the earth, like a digging, a scratching, a great yawning in a distant emptiness.

A sighing. A crying.

A singing.

* * *

Dawn came quick and frosty. The campers rose somewhat grudgingly from their hard beds, though they were instantly aware of any foreign noise: the clink of templar armor, the pound of horse hooves beneath the morning birdsong. It silently occurred to all three that they would be discovered as missing by now, and the pursuit would be on for their capture. It dawned upon Ila as the glamor of escaping wore away that this was her life now. No more promise of beds, no more books, no more sense of place. Just roaming and running and hiding, always looking over her shoulder. Maybe she should go back, and claim she sleepwalks.

As if sensing her crumbling resolve, Anders cleared his throat as she swept his cloak onto his shoulders. "We might reach the pass today," he said with a hint of challenge, as if daring someone to say otherwise. Ila glanced at Jowan. His ruddy face was miserable, but he said nothing.

The mist became fog, the sunlight falling in dusty beams through it. The trees loomed like silent sentinels of their passage. The road looked the same, stretching endlessly before them, without curve or rise or dip. Soon it became hard to tell how much time had passed. The sun seemed to remain in place, too distant and weak to burn the fog. Anders grumbled and constantly stopped them, peering to the west, waiting for some sign that they were going in the right direction. Every twig snap sent three heads snapping to the road behind them looking for templars.

They came upon no one, and passed no house. This was the wildness. They were completely alone.

After many hours of nothing-sameness Anders halted them. Jowan immediately fell to his knees, sighing heavily. If he had seemed miserable that morning it was nothing compared to how he looked now. Ila rested a hand on his shoulder, squeezing gently.

"I would rather be eaten by darkspawn," Jowan declared, too loud in the strange fog. His voice echoed oddly. Anders glared.

"Shut up. You'll scare the birds and give away our position."

Ila cocked her ear and considered. "What birds?" she asked quietly. Anders opened his mouth, then closed it. Jowan grew pale.

There was no bird sound. No scamper or scurry of wildlife. Only fog. Only chilled silence.

It made Ila's skin crawl beneath her tunic. There was something heavy and unnatural about the air, like when a spell -

"Spellwork," she whispered. Anders and Jowan looked at her.

"Are you sure?" Anders asked.

She nodded, closing her eyes, breathing deeply the scent of magic. _Where there is a spell, there is a caster,_ a voice inside reminded her. Swallowing thickly, she cleared her throat and called, "Come out."

A deep, sharp cackling broke the silence like glass. The fog parted like ocean water to reveal a woman, or at least, Ila thought she was a woman. For a moment she seemed more than a woman, tall and black and scaly with smoke coming out her nose, but that vision flickered off as quickly as it came. Then the _was_ only a woman, and an old one, with thick, dirty grey hair and a harsh, wrinkled face. She stood, staff-less, in the center of the road.

"Oh my, but you are the sharp one," the woman laughed, staring straight at Ila, who felt her very blood run cold under the weight of her gaze. Anders took two great strides forward, placing himself between the woman and Ila.

"Let us pass, hedgewitch," he said with a bravery Ila admired.

The woman stared at him for a moment, and Ila genuinely feared for him, enough that she broke her paralysis to grab his elbow as if to pull him backwards to safely. Then the woman laughed again.

"I am no mere hedgewitch, boy. I could roast you alive," she said. Her voice had a grumpy, surly tone to it that made her _seem _harmless enough.

"She's an apostate," Jowan said, with some measure of awe.

"And so are you, boy, though the difference between you and I is quite stark. You're fate is interesting, but not interesting enough," the woman said, staring at him for the first time, giving him one _humph_ before turning back to Ila and Anders. "Now you, yes, you're quite the interesting pair, deviating from your paths." To Anders, she said, "You, you're starting early, you little caged bird. Feeling flighty, eh? Don't worry, you'll get out eventually. As for you-" She spoke to Ila now. "-You're too young, yes, still much to young to be out here in the big bad world. It will eat you alive if you aren't careful."

The children stared slack-jawed, shooting each other confused glances, unsure of what to make of this woman and her rambling. Ila was the first to find words. "Do you mean to harm us?"

"Harm you?" The woman spat on the ground. "On the contrary, I'm here to help you. Or rather, to stall you. The templars are coming. I'm simply here to make sure you're caught and taken back to that nice little tower."

Anders sputtered, looking behind him, then at the woman, furious. "You - you want us caught? But we're apostates, just like you! You should look after your own!"

"I do look after my own. Just ask my daughter," the woman retorted harshly. "On second thought, don't ask Morrigan. You're just as ungrateful as she is. One day you'll thank this _hedgewitch_ for setting you straight." Again, she spoke to Ila, staring straight at her, green eyes met with ocher. "I've got my eye out for you, girl. You have a grand burden to shoulder. You're not strong enough yet. Go get stronger while you can."

Ila shuddered. A strange wind crept beneath her clothes, tossing her midnight black hair and raising gooseflesh.

"What happens if we continue anyway?" Jowan asked, not challengingly. Anders nodded vigorously in agreement.

"You passed your pass hours ago. You'll stay trapped in my little fog maze, and never come out, until perhaps you_ are_ eaten by darkspawn," the woman said, simply, her eyes hard. Distantly, as though through water, Ila heard hoofbeats. The woman stamped her foot. The fog began to clear. Anders looked around in panic.

"Quick! Run!" he shouted. He took two steps before the witch snapped her fingers, and suddenly Anders couldn't lift his feet from the earth. He looked at her wildly, and she only cackled.

"I told you, boy. I'm setting you straight. If you continue this way, you will die, and we can't have that. No, certainly not with you, little destroyer."

Anders growled. "I'll remember this."

The woman smiled serenely. "No. You won't."

And just as she was there, so did the fog swallow her again, swirling around all of them, and then lifting like smoke into the open air. The woman was gone. Ila blinked against the too-bright sun, wondering faintly why they were standing around when it seemed like they aught to be running. Weren't those templars, just down the road?

Anders seemed just as bewildered, stumbling to his knees as he lost his balance. Jowan simply looked as though he were trying not to cry, as he was known to do when situations became too much for him. Anders whipped about to face the oncoming templars, armor bright in the sunlight, and began to backpedal immediately. "Run!" he yelled, and took off down the road at top speed. Jowan stumbled to his feet and followed close behind him. Ila stood still, looking helplessly back and forth between the charge of knights and her retreating friends. Something, something told her…

It was a quick round up. Anders and Jowan couldn't hope to outrun templar stallions, and soon found themselves cuffed and gagged, tied to the saddles of two separate steeds. The Chantry wasted no effort to ensure rogue mages were brought back where they could do no harm. With Ila, the templars were at a bit of a loss. Apostates rarely resisted capture. To clear their confusion, she held out her hands and silently allowed herself the same treatment as her friends.

The ride back was short and silent. It disheartened her to see how quickly they reached the lakeshore. In truth they had not gone very far, maybe a third of the distance to Redcliffe, and on the contrary to the old woman's claim, were no where near Gherlen's Pass. They had barely made a dent in their proposed journey.

At the lakeshore a number of boats waited to take the templars and the prisoners back to Kinloch Hold. A few templars stayed behind to lead the horses, who were skittish of water and too numerous to fit on ferries, back around the northern tip of the lake to the inn stables, where they came from. Ila and Anders and Jowan were plunked, three in a row, in the middle of the largest boat. Jowan looked downcast, and Anders, infuriated. He struggled against his bonds until a templar rapped him soundly on the forehead. He was quiet, then, the rest of the journey, until the boats docked in the boathouse.

"What in the _Maker's name_ do you children think you're doing?"

Greagoir was there to greet them.

He loomed in the tower's entryway, stalking back and forth like an angry cat. Behind him stood a couple of senior mages. There was the weight of magic in the air, but not any magic Ila had ever experienced. It was like wrong-magic, anti-magic. Magic against magic. Templar work, she decided, and was confirmed when she saw a templar bearing away three vials of blood, one of which she recognized as her own.

"The phylacteries," she whispered as they were un-gagged.

Anders looked devestated. "I…forgot," he admitted, muttered out of the corner of his mouth. "It's all my fault."

"Stop whispering!" Greagoir shouted, bearing down on the children as they stood in a row before him, running their sore wrists and wincing. "You three cannot possibly imagine the trouble you're in. Running away from the Tower, and in the middle of the night! You could have been killed."

"It touches me," said a gravely voice from the doorway. "To see you care so much for their safety."

Ila glanced up to see First Enchanter Irving standing in the doorway. She had seen him a few times, hovering in the back of her lessons, and met him only once, the day she arrived at the tower and he took a vial of her blood. Anders and Jowan seemed to know him for the same reasons. Jowan looked away, out of respect and a bit of fear. Anders only glared, in defiance.

Greagoir rounded on Irving, unintimidated. "These are supposed to be your charges, Irving. I've never seen three children so young act so insolent. This is a terrible sign for their further education!"

"And now their education? Goodness, Greagoir, you sound like a mother hen," Irving said pleasantly, stepping around the head templar to regard his young charges. "Hmm. Anders, is it? And Jowan. I can't say I'm surprised. Ila Amell." There, he did sound surprised, but if there was reason, he said no more.

"What do you propose we do, Irving?" Greagoir demanded. "They've put the tower in an upset, looking for them. The senior mages can hardly contain the rest of the children, and all the apprentices are gossiping. Not to mention to cook, who was _attacked_, I might add, with _magic_."

"Bring them to my office," said Irving. "I will deal with them privately."

"You shall deal with them, alone?" Greagoir said.

Irving chuckled. 'They're only children. They aren't going to harm me. Mage's folly will have a mage's punishment, not that of an angry templar." With that, he turned to the children, looking them each in the eye, and said, "Come."

They followed immediately. However intimidating the First Enchanter might be, there was no doubt in their minds that they preferred him to Greagoir, who might make them clean something. They trailed after him like sad ducklings through the first floor and onto the second. Those they passed stopped and stared, or began to whisper behind their hands. Ila felt her cheeks begin to flush again as one of her teachers eyed her with a distrust she was uncomfortable with. Ila was not used to being distrusted.

Once they reached Irving's office, they filed in and he shut the heavy door behind them. They stood in a huddle as he walked to his desk, sinking down into his high-backed chair. He folded his hands, and considered them. Now, out of sight of students and templars, he looked different. The look on Irving's face, the sorrowful disappointment, soured Ila stomach. It was like watching the only father she'd ever truly known become disillusioned with her own innocence. She vowed then, silently, never to betray Irving again.

"I am not sure," he finally said, "whether to punish you or hug you."

"H-Hug us?" Jowan blurted out in surprise. Irving nodded.

"As soon as I learned _who_ was missing, I became gravely worried. It is a dangerous world out there for adult mages in the full training, and an ever more wicked one for foolish, ignorant children. Greagoir was right about one thing: you could have been killed. He was wrong, however, to think that was the worst that could happen to you. Out there, without the protection of the Circle, you could have fallen prey to something worse than darkspawn."

The children knew he meant demons.

"But…we didn't," Anders said, daring to build an argument. "We - we were fine."

"You were heading to the Frostbacks, were you not?" Irving asked plainly. Anders sputtered. Irving continued, "This time of year the mountains are deadly. You had few supplies and a vacuous plan. The mountains would have swallowed you, and then what would you have proven? That you can die of frostbite, just like any other man?"

Ila's brow knotted. It seemed like somehow she knew that, knew that they would have died, but she couldn't recall how she reached that conclusion.

Anders and Jowan said nothing, mollified. Irving was silent for a moment, thinking.

"Anders," he said next. "For your punishment, you will spend a week confined to a room. Meals will be brought. You may bring one book. I encourage you, however, to think on what you have done, and the dangers you have put your friends in. I am correct in assuming you the mastermind of this operation." It was not a question. "You are dismissed."

Anders stared at him, bright-eyed, a look Ila knew, just as she knew then that no Circle would ever hold him.

"Jowan," Irving continued. "I am disappointed in you. As the oldest, I expect you to set a good example, not follow the impassioned whims of those below you. You, my lad, will also spend a week in semi-solitary confinement. You may bring one book. Choose wisely. You are dismissed."

Jowan said nothing, mumbling some kind of thank you as he hastily backed out of the room, nearly tripping over himself as he did so.

Ila stood alone, looking at the Enchanter, stomach full of dread.

He considered her for the longest time, then sighed. "Dear girl, what were you thinking?"

His questions surprised her. "I was thinking that they shouldn't go alone," she said truthfully, shrugging her bony shoulders and nervously tucking her hair behind her ear.

Her answer seemed to please him, in an abstract way she couldn't quite understand. "And what will you do, the next time some you care about suggests something dangerous?"

"I will consider it differently," she said, telling him partly the truth and partly what she thought he wanted her to say, desperate to please him again.

"Will you?"

"Yes."

"There is a responsibility for those with great power, Ila Amell. I believe you have great power, and I once believed you knew how to handle it. Perhaps I was wrong?"

"N-No, First Enchanter. I do well in all my lessons! I have top marks," she insisted.

Irving chuckled. "I am aware. You _do_ do well. Very well. Astoundingly well. You have a great talent, one that I wish your family was more proud of. But do bear such a great magic is to bear an equally great responsibility, lest you destroy yourself."

"I - I do not wish to hurt anyone, First Enchanter," she whispered.

"You will, if you continue as such," he said harshly, simply. Ila looked away.

"Then I will stop." She was sullen now, convinced there were no right answers in this unpredictable conversation.

"Will you? Can you? Once an object is in motion, will it no say as such until another force stops it? Can _you_ truly stop your magic from leading you down a path of darkness?"

"I am _not _my magic," she argued wildly. The truth bubbled to her lips and spilled into the air. "I am what I choose to do with it."

The First Enchanter gave pause, regarding his young pupil with a mix of pride and mild interest. "Perhaps, then, you will make better choices."

Ila fell silent, though her gaze did not lower. She nodded once.

"Yes, Enchanter."

"You are dismissed, mage child."

Hesitating, Ila meekly said, "My punishment, Enchanter?"

Irving leaned back in his chair, absently twirling the ends of his beard between his thumb and forefinger. "One month of scribe work. Senior Enchanter Sweeney could use a fresh pair of eyes on those old tombs. And perhaps you will learn something, as well. Dismissed."

Her young face brightened. This was a laughable punishment; a joy, in fact, for a child who craved the smell of old parchment as she did. "Thank you, Enchanter," she says, breathlessly. Ducking her head to hide her smile, she quickly exited. Barely out the door, she began to run, hair wild behind her, shouting for Jowan.

Irving chuckled to himself. The girl warmed his heart, though he did his best to remain neutral with all his charges. Any one of them could be lost to demons, or thralled by darkness, or sent away to another Circle, army, or patron lord. The life of the mage, as it is said, is one of inconstant company. A road long yet bright with wonders. A road all mages walked but a rare few truly traveled. She, though, that one - she was a traveler-!

"Irving!" Greagoir barked from the doorway. "Am I to understand that one of your escaped apprentices got off without increased watch or solitary confinement? What is this I hear about scribe duty? Have you gone soft, or completely senile?"

Pulled thus from his musings, the First Enchanter sighed and rose from his chair. "I will explain, Greagoir. After I warm my tea."

* * *

In the apprentice quarter's the torches burned dim as the many boys and girls settled to their bunks. One bed remained empty.

Far below in the cool darkness of the basement, Ila sat on the stairs with her legs against her chest. She looked into the darkness and heard faintly the song of the earth.

"One day, I will understand," she said softly. The distant rocks shifted, a great old sound a hundred years in the making and so faint she can barely hear it.

_Freedom_, it said. _Freedom._

* * *

Good job reading!

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Eternally,

Greeny


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